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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: man, emotional, and with a need, now and again, to exercise
parsimony in emotions not strictly needful, something a
little mechanical, something hard and fast and clearly
understood, would enter into his ideal of a home. There were
storms enough without, and equability was to be desired at
the fireside even at a sacrifice of deeper pleasures. So,
from a wife, of all women, he would not ask much. One letter
to her which has come down to us is, I had almost said,
conspicuous for coldness. (3) He calls her, as he called
other female correspondents, "dearly beloved sister;" the
epistle is doctrinal, and nearly the half of it bears, not
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